


With the Wings of a Butterfly

by Iaso



Category: Naruto
Genre: Adventure, Family, Fluff, Gen, Like if we're honest there's gonna be romance somewhere, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 03:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10800399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iaso/pseuds/Iaso
Summary: Even the smallest of butterflies can create a hurricane with a flap of its wings, should one be patient enough.





	1. Chapter 1

"You did what?"

"Genma—"

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

The two men stood in the living room of the house, the warmth of the morning sun that streamed through the windows in a stark contrast to the ice that permeated the air.

"I… I just can't look at her," the older man bit out.

"Oh, and that's her fault?" the other man spat back at him.

"You don't understand, Genma," the older man tried again, voice hard, his patience already thinning, even just a few minutes into the conversation.

Genma's face tightened, and there was a flash of something in his eyes before his expression wiped itself clean.

"You aren't the only one who suffered," Genma answered in a hollow voice. "I lost friends—a lot of them. I lost a mentor. Don't patronize me, you old bastard, I understand perfectly."

"All I see when I look at her is Momoko! You don't understand, you couldn't possibly understand."

Genma shook his head, the tips of his brown hair brushing against his chin, senbon clicking as his teeth closed around the end of it. "Selfish as always," Genma replied. "Good to see you haven't changed a bit."

"You can't talk to me like that—"

"Why not?" Genma asked as he leant his hip against the edge of his couch, creating a wall with his body that blocked our the rest of his apartment, refusing to allow that man to do anything more than stand in the entryway, not wanting to give him a chance to further encroach on his life, even slightly. That man was perfectly fine where he was, only a half a step past the door's threshold. "I don't owe you anything, I haven't for years."

"It wasn't my fault."

"Oh, of course not," Genma said, shifting the senbon around in his mouth and stuffing down the urge to fire it at the man in front of him. "It wasn't your fault that she got sick. It wasn't your fault that she stopped being pretty enough anymore to hold your attention. It wasn't your fault that she had to spend all her time raising the son you never wanted. I guess it's just like how it's not your fault that you went and had another kid you didn't want."

The older man's face flushed a vibrant red but he wouldn't dare try anything reckless, regardless of how this argument went—he was a civilian, and that boy was a shinobi. No matter how the situation ended, if wouldn't be in the older man's favor, not by a long shot.

"I didn't come here to fight with you," the older man said and let out a sigh, forcing himself to hold his composure.

"Because you just came here to foist a sibling on me that I didn't even know I had."

The older man clenched his jaw. "You could have known about her."

"Not really—hell, I never even knew you remarried." Genma fisted his hands in his pockets and let out a scornful snort. "Was she a civilian this time? Or did you go and fuck another kunoichi just to feel better about yourself?"

"Don't talk about Momoko like that. Have some respect."

"I'll talk about her however I like."

The older man shook his head and turned on his heel. The idiot boy wouldn't see his side of things, he never did. "I won't speak to you again after this," the man said. "I dropped Tomoko off at the orphanage this morning—you can either leave her there or go get her."

"Just like that?" Genma asked. "You really abandoned your daughter at an orphanage."

"I had to."

"And now you're shoving all the responsibility on me because things got tough—again."

"You don't have to get her, Genma," the man said. "The matron said she's young enough that she has a chance to get adopted."

"Right. Like you've actually given me any type of choice. I'm not sure if you noticed, but not everybody can ignore their family as easy as you."

The man stiffened at the words, but didn't directly respond to them, instead only answering, "I will be leaving the village within the week."

With those words, the man turned and walked out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

Genma stared at his now closed front door, giving it a contemptuous glare, before he spat his senbon out at it, the metal giving a soft 'clink' as it embedded itself in the wood. The only solace he got out of that conversation was his belief that he'd never have to speak to that man again. He gave a bitter shake of his head and yanked off his bandana, running a shaking hand through his hair.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?


	2. Humble Beginnings - Part 1

I was not happy.

I sat in the corner of the orphanage's playroom, pudgy baby arms crossed over my even pudgier baby chest, cheeks puffed out and mouth set in a scowl.

"Tomoko-chan?" a voice asked to my left, nearly drowned out by the obnoxious screams of every other infant—normal infant, mind, so as annoying as it was, I couldn't exactly fault them over it, it was kind of just what babies did—in the room. I turned to look at her, recognizing the voice as that of the matron of the orphanage.

"Yes?" I responded, even the single syllable feeling clumsy as it fell off my tongue, like my mouth was full of cotton.

"There's somebody here for you," she said.

Odd.

I thought back, recalling the last couple of families who had inquired about me. Neither had seemed that promising, but there was no other reason for the matron to have come see me personally; her's was the first face you saw in the orphanage, and it'd always be the last, as she delivered the children to their new families when they were being adopted. Most of the people who had come to see me had either been turned off by my mismatched eyes, my assumed shinobi parentage, or my disposition.

It was stressing out the caretakers, I could tell—after the Kyuubi attack a couple of months ago, the orphanage had gotten flooded with a sea of newly orphaned shinobi children, much like myself. Well, at least that was what I believed. It was hard for me to say with much certainty, as that was before I had 'woken up', for lack of a better term.

As I'm sure you've begun to pick up on it, I'll be frank.

I was reincarnated.

Who I was before didn't matter. Aside from the few, obvious exceptions, my memories from before didn't matter. I couldn't go back. I couldn't regain that life. It had been heart-wrenching, but the logical part of me knew it was best to let those memories fade away, rather than try to keep hold of them, for the sake of my sanity. Instead, I put my effort into maintaining the ones that I knew would truly matter in the long run.

It hadn't taken me all that long to recognize what had happened—I hadn't been a huge anime fan, but I had gotten into a few series, with Naruto thankfully being one of them, though I hadn't been somebody who followed the series religiously. To believe what had happened, however, had taken some time, though once my logic had had a chance to assert itself I realized I was better off accepting the world around me instead of trying to fight it. There wasn't exactly another explanation for waking up in the body of a baby—the fact that I hadn't been in a newborn body had thrown me for a loop, though.

My general assumption had been that, on the day of October 10th, the first Tomoko, the actual baby Tomoko, had died. My own soul, freshly evicted from my old body via a bullet to the brain, had then swooped in to take over. That theory left me with a few questions, mostly because my memories stopped after the attack and only picked up again with me waking up on my cot in the orphanage, but it was the best I was able to come up with. It also didn't help that the only recollections I had of the attack were faint, which became a bit of a running theme the more I traversed the memories stored inside my new mind.

All of the memories from the time before my soul had joined the party were fuzzy and difficult to discern, so I hadn't yet figured out exactly how old my new body was. Language and development were somewhere in the range of a year and a half to two years of age, but with the weird way shinobi were capable of developing, and my lack of understanding in regards to what my parentage was—orphanages tend to not be helpful with that type of thing—I had come to the conclusion that that wasn't a viable way to gauge my age.

I was stuck waiting until I developed the language capabilities to ask somebody. I hoped that wouldn't take long, but I also wasn't terribly optimistic about it.

I blinked and realized the matron was still staring at me, waiting for me to answer her previous statement.

"Okay," I said.

The matron watched me with hawk eyes as I pushed myself up on the ground, grabbed my teddy bear from where it had sat beside me, and toddled towards her. She grabbed my free hand to help me balance as we walked, not that I really needed the assistance.

We walked down the long hallway, her taking short steps, and I, toddling along on unsteady baby legs, trying to keep myself balanced as the teddy bear, light as it was, weighed down my left side. The windows let the rays of the sun tumble over us. As we walked, the noise of children playing and babies crying seeped out from underneath the doorways.

I assumed that, through one of those doors, an infant Naruto was partaking in the creation of that symphony of screaming. I hadn't seen him, but I knew he was here, somewhere, lost in the sea of children.

Those of us who were below the ages of three weren't given the freedom to move around the building. We had set schedules, as it was the only way for the caretakers to actually keep up with the sheer amount of children currently inhabiting the orphanage. Naruto, at only a few months old, was still confined to the section of the orphanage that housed all of the crib-bound children, and none of us were allowed to enter there, as there was too much of a risk that we'd disturb them—when one gets set off, they all start screaming, like a line of dominoes crashing down. I had heard it once and never wanted to hear it again.

We got to a door that had a gold plate along it's middle, with a score of Japanese characters—I couldn't tell the alphabets apart yet, much to my chagrin—emblazoned across it.

She twisted the knob and the door creaked open. A young man stood with his back to us, a mop of brown hair hanging down to the nape of his neck and shoulders hunched in a casual manner, his hands shoved into his pockets. At the sound of the door he turned, and immediately I pulled my consciousness back some to avoid having too visceral of a physical reaction.

I recognized that face.

Not because I had ever seen that face in this life, not because the old Tomoko had seen that face. No. My recollections of that face were of it in animated form.

Hitae-ate worn like a bandana. Senbon poking out from between his lips, held in the corner of his mouth.

"Tomoko-chan," the matron said, "your onii-san is here to take you home."

Oh, no way.

Genma's lips turned down around the end of the senbon. "Ah, she might not recognize me."

I stared. Rudely so, I was well aware, but I felt entitled to it in that moment.

There were no memories of a brother hidden in that mind, neither were there any memories of one Genma Shiranui. I supposed, an extended mission could have just kept him out of the village for the whole of my infancy, and then kept him from coming to get me for upwards of two months, but that didn't sit quite right. If I recalled correctly, he had been in the village on the night of October 10th.

"Tomoko-chan," the matron said, prodding me in the back. "Manners."

"Hello," I burbled automatically, the word not quite right but close enough that it was easily recognizable.

I found it interesting, too, that the matron didn't question why I wouldn't recognize him, not even for a second. I supposed the ranking of shinobi entitled you to a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy with things of this nature.

She simply picked up my bag, handed it to him, and then let him take me away.

I wasn't going to protest—the orphanage was loud and the food sucked. There wasn't actually anything to miss about living there.

'*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*'

The first couple of months with Genma were a bit rocky. Not a surprise, really, especially once I realized just how young he was. I couldn't even begin to imagine how much harder that would have been for him if he had gotten a normal one-year-old little girl. I, with my olderish—the information regarding my exact age had faded with most of my memories, except that I had been teenaged at the time of my death—consciousness, was relatively low maintenance.

He didn't really seem to know what to do with me. My quietness perplexed him, as did the matter-of-fact way that I spoke when I did actually open my mouth. The matron had informed him of my interest in puzzles, so within the first week, I had an impressive set to work my way through, which was how I spent most of my time. The ones at the orphanage had been puny, four to eight piece pictures, that were intended to entertain actual one-year-olds. Genma had gotten one of those to start, and upon watching me put it together in a few seconds, took it back and exchanged it for something a bit more challenging. They kept me busy but also managed to reveal something that I had noted, but hadn't been able to name up to that point.

I was constantly left feeling that, on some level, my consciousness and my actual brain were detached from each other.

I could look at a puzzle and automatically know what steps were required to solve it, yet find myself incapable of actually following through with the solution; my hands couldn't quite figure out how to make the piece fit just so, even when I could visualize it. It was a frustrating period, waiting for things to catch up. Genma would occasionally take them away if he thought I was getting too worked up over it, which only heightened my annoyance. I tried to hide it, but he always seemed to know when it was happening, sometimes even before I myself realized how worked up I was getting.

Well, at least he did that when he was actually home to do it.

He wasn't really around that much. He was an active duty shinobi during a time when Konoha had recently suffered a major blow to her shinobi population, so it wasn't unexpected, but it still ended up bothering me. For the first month, at least, he'd been there while both of us adjusted to the change. We moved out of his old and cramped apartment, into something a bit bigger, on the other side of the village where a lot of other young families lived. During the second month he had been gone on a mission, so a genin team stayed in me with the apartment. The third month he was home intermittently, in and out.

To say I had been lonely wasn't quite the right word—I had had three kids constantly milling around, whose jobs were almost entirely based around keeping me entertained. They were nice. He had always managed to get the same team, as well, so I had grown as accustomed to their presence around the apartment as I had Genma's.

Which, in retrospect, actually sounded kind of pathetic, and essentially summed up the problem that I had with the situation. I wanted my brother to actually feel like my brother. I got the distinct sense that he still saw me as some kid he was responsible for, rather than his little sister. There was an emotional distance between the two of us. Again, not unexpected, but bothersome nonetheless. I knew that I had to be patient with him. To expect him to attach himself to me in only a few months wasn't fair; this type of thing took time, there was no way to force it.

The first step towards improvement on that front had happened four months after he first took me home from the orphanage.

He had been called in for a short out of village mission, so the genin team had come to stay with me.

I sat on the living room floor, my puzzle spread out on the rug in front of me, all of the pieces dumped out of the box and turned up so that I could see what was on them. It was a four hundred piece puzzle. The picture it formed was of a kunai whizzing through the air, because shinobi truly were that unoriginal.

The genin team was littered around the apartment with me. Their jonin-sensei, a man named Taka, was on the roof of the apartment, keeping an eye on his students without getting in their way as they did their job. Kai was making dinner, Genji was tidying up the house, while Aime sat beside me, watching me work.

I had figured showing any advanced intelligence would make me stick out like a sore thumb. Nobody seemed to bat an eye at it, though. Given the freaky brand of intelligence that some shinobi—cough, Nara, cough—displayed, even at a young age, it wasn't as out of the ordinary in this world as it would have been in my old one. I tried to limit myself somewhat when there were people around because I could see some serious drawbacks if people thought I was too smart, but the sheer level of boredom that came with being this age had made it a challenge.

I started forming the border of the puzzle.

Aime didn't take her eyes off me, not bothering to hide her curiosity. I had heard her tell Kai that she found it 'fascinating' to watch me.

I let out a noise of distaste as my chubby hand pushed a piece into its place a bit too firmly, and the other pieces around it dislodged themselves. Aime laughed and pushed all of them back to where they belonged.

"Tomoko-chan," Kai called from in the kitchen, "do you like peppers?"

"Green ones!" I cried.

He paused, hand hovering over the pan. "You like the green ones?"

"Yes!"

"Okay."

Another puzzle piece found its way into my grip, and I stared at what I had already formed of the image, working out an estimate of where it would end up.

"Where are your manners, kiddo?"

I jumped—I hadn't even heard the door open. Given that Aime started beside me, neither had she. I turned my head and blinked at Genma, who was still in full mission gear. The young adult had his eyebrow raised expectantly.

I scrambled up from my spot on the rug and lumbered over, latching onto his leg koala-style despite the mud caking his pants. He rolled his eyes and shuffled into the house, using his free hand to lift me up by the back of my shirt and situate me against his hip, giving a nod to the genin who were in the immediate vicinity.

He looked… well… not fantastic, to put it nicely.

His hair was damp with sweat and rainwater. His flak jacket had a few kinks and rips in it, and there was a chunk missing from his navy undershirt. While the stains on his pants were ones I could confidently label as mud, the stains on his shirt were just a few too many shades red, speaking of blood rather than dirt. I doubted any of that blood was his, since there were no bandages or wounds peeking through the tears in his clothes, nor did he seem to be moving with any particular level of pain, aside from the typical muscle ache that came with the extended period of movement such as what was seen in a mission.

"Hello, Shiranui-san," Aime said. She had stood up from the rug and come over to where we were, watching my brother and I with a small smile.

"Hey—and just call me Genma, remember? Shiranui-san makes me feel old."

The girl's smile widened some. "Right, sorry."

Kai turned from the stove and gave Genma a once-over. "Do you want us to stay for a bit, Shira—I mean, Genma-san? Just while you uh… get cleaned up, and stuff. I've started dinner and Genji is in the bathroom cleaning up."

Genma looked down at me as if to ask 'what did you do', though I figured he already had a pretty good idea, given that there were only so many messes that a young child could make in a bathroom. My bladder hadn't yet learned to keep up with my body all that well. While I knew to use the toilet, my bladder didn't alway agree with me, which was about as much fun about as one would imagine. Most of the time, I made it to the toilet. Sometimes, a little bit slipped out—no, I would not specify what slipped out—on the way there. I gave a sheepish grin, and he just shook his head with a sigh.

"Yeah, please," he said.

The boy nodded and shuffled whatever was in the pan absently. "No problem."

Genma jerked his head up towards the ceiling. "Tell your sensei he should come in and eat with us."

"Taka-sensei already ate."

"I thought he liked your cooking?"

"He does, it's just that his wife packed him a bento, and he's didn't want to make her mad by not eating it—ah, don't tell him I said that, though."

Genma snorted. "Fair enough."

There was a thud from up on the roof, like somebody banging a hand against it, and a muffled shout of, "I heard that!"

The boy's face went beet red, and Aime gave a delicate little giggle.

"Sorry, Taka-sensei!" Kai squeaked.

Genma detached me from around his shoulders and handed me off to Aime, either missing or ignoring the pout on my face—probably the latter. The girl had noticed the pout, though, as she ran a hand through what little hair I had.

"He's probably just tired, Tomoko-chan," she whispered, keeping her voice low so that nobody else could hear, "I don't think he meant to ignore you."

All the same, I still felt miffed by the fact that he hadn't even bothered to give me a simple 'hello'.

Aime took me back to the rug and let me play there while she went to set the table.

I had a puzzle piece in my hand, one that fit into the section of the puzzle that depicted the kunai's handle, when there was a cry from on top of the roof, and a loud thud. It was different from the one before. This one held far more force, so much so that bits of dust were sent raining down from the ceiling.

There was a clatter, as Aime dropped the utensils and lurched towards where I was; Genji came crashing out of the bathroom; Kai hurriedly switched off the stove and moved towards the living room. Everything happened in half of a second. From my perspective, one second I was on the rug. I blinked. When my eyes opened, I was suddenly in the girl's arms.

Kai's gaze flickered around the room. He pointed to part of the living room, the corner of it, having deemed it the most easily defensible in the room. "Over there," he hissed. "Defensive position around Tomoko-chan."

Genma came flying out of his room with what I assumed was shunshin levels of speed, kunai palmed and face stone cold. His bandana was off, revealing just how much of a damp, matted mess his hair was. He'd taken off his flak jacket as well, leaving him in only an undershirt and his pants.

There was another thud, and the sound of metal grinding against metal.

Genma hopped up onto the counter, vaulted through the window, and was up onto the roof in a flash.

Almost as soon as the genin had had a chance to assemble around me, a single halted scream pierced the air. A distinctly female scream. All three of them tensed, sitting on the balls of their feet and entirely unarmed, as this wasn't supposed to be a mission that involved combat.

There was the sound something tumbling down the slope of the roof, and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw as a body with golden blonde hair soared past the window on its way down to the ground.

I let out an involuntary squeak.

With the fight over, the two men reentered the room via the kitchen window. Genma had a bit of blood splattered on his right sleeve, the arm he held his kunai in, while the majority of Taka's shirt was coated in it. The stench was awful, even with them all the way across the apartment, in the kitchen.

The genin, realizing that the danger had passed, broke out of their formation, Aime immediately picking me up so that she could hold me close to her chest. I could feel her heart still hammering against her ribcage.

The whole thing had happened over the course of, at most, a minute.

The fact that a shinobi of that caliber had gotten as close as she had was more than a little frightening. Taka was a jonin. Genma was a tokubetsu jonin. Neither of them would be a 'pushover' in a fight, by any stretch of the imagination. That woman had to have been a jonin, at the very least, and she had gotten through the gates, past a large portion of the village—the apartment was nestled in a neighbourhood that sat on the opposite end of the village gates—and then picked out our specific room from among the rest of the building.

Following the logical train of thought, she had likely trailed Genma on his way home, given he had just gotten back from a mission, and the state of wear and tear of his clothes when he had returned spoke of a combat mission. Had Taka not been up there waiting, she could have jumped right through that window and put a kunai through my head without a second thought, if she had managed to get in before Genma had a chance to react.

It wasn't of my own will that my lower lip started to wobble as I started to process the situation—it was the stupid baby brain.

Genma and Taka had taken to talking in hushed voices. Genma's shoulders were stiff, his lips pursed in a grim line, his eyebrows furrowed, his hands clenched at his side—he looked mad. Odds were, he had worked out the same thing as I had. Taka wasn't a particularly happy camper either, but I got the feeling he was trying to calm Genma down somewhat, as he had a hand wrapped around Genma's elbow and the tone of his voice was low as it carried through the air.

Amie looked from me, with my saucer eyes, over to Genma. "Um, Genma-san?"

Genma turned to her and caught sight of my face, his expression softening. "Ah shit," he muttered under his breath, running a shaking hand through his hair as he broke away from Taka and moving over to where we were. "C'mere, Tomoko-chan."

Aime moved me into his outstretched arms and I let my head rest on his collarbone, my tiny arms encircling his neck, the dam that held the tears at bay breaking upon contact. I felt his chin rest on top of my head and his chest shift as he let out a sigh.

"Let me deal with this, Genma," Taka said.

"You sure?"

"Yeah," Taka said, "I'll get her to T&I and have them send a guard over."

The fact that he planned to send her to T&I implied that he believed her to have survived losing a significant amount of blood and falling down two stories of an apartment building. Though, when one considered the sheer level of physical abuse that some had suffered during the fights of the series, I supposed it wasn't that unbelievable a thought to entertain.

"What about us, Taka-sensei?" Kai asked.

"We need to stay here, don't we?" Aime looked to their sensei with a frown. "We can help protect Tomoko-chan."

"I think Genma-san can probably do that for us," Genji muttered.

"But we can help," Aime insisted. "Right?"

Genma's chin moved off my head, and I assumed him and Taka shared a look, having a short non-verbal conversation. If there were more jonin-level shinobi coming after the house, the genin would be bat away by them like flies, and likely serve as more of a hindrance than a help, needing to be protected rather than being able to do any actual protecting.

"You're better off coming with me, I think," Taka said.

Aime opened her mouth to protest but Genji pinched her in the arm before she could say anything. She yelped, whipping around to glare at him, and the boy returned the look. Kai smacked both of them upside the head.

"Knock it off," he hissed.

The two other genin turned away from each other in a huff, looking all the more like a couple of kids who just got scolded by their mom for misbehaving in public.

Taka just sighed and shook his head. "Come on," he said. "Let's get going."


	3. Humble Beginnings - Part 2

"Over here," a voice called.

Genma turned his head to the left and spotted Aoba, already sitting in front of the bar, a cheesy grin on his face. He couldn't help but roll his eyes—the guy had been there for ten minutes, at most, and had already started drinking. The only time that grin came out was when Aoba drank, Genma had been out with him enough times to know that.

"Hey, man," Genma said, sidling up beside him and receiving a clap on the shoulder in greeting.

"Hey yourself, birthday boy."

Genma snorted. "How much have you already had, Aoba?"

The man shrugged. "A little here, a little there." As if to emphasis the point, Aoba picked up his cup and downed the remaining contents of it, not so much as cringing at the taste nor the sensation of fire scorching his throat. Genma could smell the drink from where he sat, he knew that that was strong stuff. Though, he also knew that strong stuff was the only thing that ever worked with shinobi. "So, did you get anybody else to come out?"

"Asuma said he would, so did Ibiki," Genma said, leaning back in his chair and scratching his head.

He wasn't sure if either of them would actually come, but he didn't say that. Asuma was always a bit of a flake, and Genma hadn't even expected Ibiki to agree in the first place, not after the last time the two of them went out together.

An eyebrow arched above the sunglasses. "Ibiki? You invited him? He's not exactly the 'life of the party' type of guy."

"Have you ever seen Ibiki drink?"

"Well… no."

"Exactly."

"Whatever, man, your birthday," Aoba said, raising a hand to the bartender. "What about Rai?"

"Who do you think's watching Moko-chan?"

"Really?"

"He offered," Genma said with a shrug. "Said it was his birthday gift to me since I couldn't find any genin teams to watch her this late notice. Besides, you know he's not really a fan of going out."

"What about Izumo and Kotetsu? Don't they watch her sometimes?"

"Yeah, but they're not in the village. Most people aren't right now—July's peak season and all that. She thinks they're annoying anyways, she always hates it when I get them to watch her."

Not that Genma ever allowed that tidbit stop him from using the two as babysitters. The look on her face anytime she saw the two of them walk through the door always more than made up for her sulking over it.

"I thought they got better?"

"They did, she's just too stubborn to let go of her grudge from the first couple of times."

"Isn't she old enough to like… watch herself yet?" Aoba asked.

Genma made a face and answered, "She's three and a half."

"Yeah, but she's mature, and stuff."

Genma rolled his eyes. "Maturity doesn't help you reach the kitchen sink, Aoba."

"She's still that short?"

"She is, but don't say that around her—I think she's sensitive about it," Genma admitted, his lips twisting into a smirk. "Guy called her short last week and she threw a pencil at him, nailed him in the ass crack with the pointed end of it."

That had made him proud. Nothing like watching a small child throw sharp objects at people, and actually hit their mark—especially when he knew that he was the reason for said show of marksmanship.

The bartender made his way over to them and filled up their glasses. Genma didn't bother questioning it, as he trusted the establishment to not poison him, and he trusted Aoba to have good taste in liquor.

Aoba let out a laugh. "I take it that means her weapon training has been going well?"

"I mean, as good as it can be," Genma said. "Her arm muscles aren't developed enough, obviously, but she's got stupid good aim for a kid her age. When she does actually throw something far enough, she tends to hit it."

"That's still pretty good, considering you've only been training her for a few months," Aoba said. "And, y'know, her age."

"Yeah, I think so."

"Guess it runs in the family, eh?"

Genma took a large sip from his glass, silently hoping that that was the only thing she had inherited from their shared familial ties. "Must."

'*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*'

"Moko-chan, dinner's ready!"

"One sec," I answered.

I sat at the living room table, cross-legged. The lamp to my left had been flicked on so I could better see what I was doing, illuminating the two pages in front of me; bits of eraser lay scattered across the table. On one page, there were ten smoothly written kanji, nary a stroke out of place on any of them. On the other, my chicken scratch attempts at imitating them.

Kanji. Oh, kanji.

From the moment I had been capable of holding a pencil, I pestered Genma to teach me kanji, which he obliged, albeit with a look that made wonder whether or not I'd end up regretting my enthusiasm.

I doubted that though—it would take a lot to make me regret jumpstarting the process, as I desperately wanted to write.

As the years had gone by, my memories of this world and the events that would shake it, had begun to fade out of my grasp. It had started with small things, like forgetting a minor character's name or mixing up the order of events in an arc. As the years went by, though, even the bigger names and faces grew fuzzy, whole arcs were nothing but a blur in my mind, and I realized that if I didn't start recording what I knew soon, there might not have been anything left for me to make use of a few years down the road.

However, I had drastically underestimated how much of a pain learning kanji would be. There were literally thousands of them, and each one could potentially have multiple meanings. Some looked almost identical, with only the smallest of stroke difference. I had started spending hours at a time just sitting hunched over in the living room, meticulously tracing out each stroke of the different kanji that Genma gave me, refusing to stop until I was completely satisfied with my own work. Raido and Aoba tended to pitch in with their own contributions when they were around the apartment, such as in that situation.

"One!"

"Rai," I whined, taking full advantage of just how annoying my squeaky little voice still was. "Come on, please?"

"You can finish working on that later," he said, coming into the room and fixing me with a frown.

"But I'm almost done!" I reasoned, holding the paper up and waving it at him. "See!"

He didn't look terribly impressed. I didn't bother trying my doe eyes—which I believed were excellent, and my track record backed it up—because I knew that Raido was immune to them. The only way I could ever get to him was through annoyance, and even that wasn't always successful.

"You're going to make me regret showing those to you," Raido said.

"Why?"

"Because I think Genma will kill me if you skip dinner for the sake of working on your kanji."

"Why?"

"Because proper nutrition is important."

"Why?"

"Enough," Raido sighed, shaking his head. He came over and plucked me up from my spot, tossing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"Rai!"

"I just spent half an hour making you dinner," he said. "You're gonna eat it before it gets cold."

"What if I'm not hungry?"

"Tough."

I let out a huff. "Meanie."

He set me down in the kitchen, and I helped him get the table ready before I took my spot at the table. Admittedly, whatever he had cooked got my mouth watering, and my stomach let out a growl. Raido may have been annoying and strict, but his cooking more than made up for it.

At the sound of my stomach, Raido turned to look at me, a smug grin on his face. "What happened to not being hungry?"

My face flushed, and I stubbornly looked down at the table. He rolled his eyes, reaching over to ruffle my hair as he set down a bowl in front of me. I gave an indignant squawk in response which only made him laugh.

"Itadakimasu," I said, picking up my chopsticks and breaking them apart, ready to dig in, when I heard a knock on the door. Raido sighed and went to get up, but I beat him to it. "I got it!"

Still, I heard the sound of footsteps, following along at a lazy pace behind me.

Anko was supposed to return from her mission that day and she'd promised to visit me as soon as she got back.

Genma had brought her in one day as an emergency sitter. He had gotten called in short-notice for a mission, and there had been no available genin teams to come watch me for a couple of days, nor did he know anybody else who would be willing to stay with me that was actually in the village. Anko had offered, and as much of a nut job as she was, she had been one hell of an entertaining babysitter. Genma hadn't been thrilled with her giving me sweets to eat for two days straight and letting me play with her kunai—"It was only the non-poisoned training ones! They're so blunt they couldn't cut air!" had been her defence—but he still let her watch me sometimes because I liked her so much.

So, when I threw open the door, hers had been the face I expected to see.

Instead, I saw a man, a woman, and two very young children. The man was older, with a scruffy beard and hair that was streaked with gray. The woman was rather young, in her mid-twenties perhaps, with clothing and a hairstyle indicative of the more rural villages—husband and wife, if I were to assume, which also fit with the rural villages scattered across Fire Country. They hadn't quite gotten past the traditional Japanese values like most of the more centralized villages had, especially in regards to women and their function in society, and the lack of consideration for age when forming marriages. One of the children was only a few months old, at most, still swaddled in a blanket and cradled in its mother's arms. The other was perhaps two, maybe a bit younger, with his hand grasping at his mother's skirt and his eyes wide as he stared at me.

While the woman and children were entirely unfamiliar, the man's face was vaguely recognizable, one where I knew I'd seen it before, but the 'who, what, where, when' eluded me.

I heard Raido's footsteps come to a halt as the doorway entered his line of sight, and the temperature in the apartment seemed to drop twenty degrees.

"Tomoko-chan," the man said, giving me a small, confident grin. "How are you?"

His tone spoke of a familiarity that set me on edge, and something of a sinking feeling entered my stomach. Rather than answer his question, I blinked at him, not trying to hide my confusion. "Uh… sorry, who are you?"

Before he could answer, Raido moved forward, so that he was standing in front of me and effectively blocking out the man in the hallway. "You should leave," he said, words clipped. "You're not welcome here."

The woman glanced at the man uncertainly, setting a hand on the head of the young child and tightening her hold on the infant.

The man wasn't deterred, though, and he frowned, spreading his hands out in front of him. "Can't a man visit his children?"

Then it clicked.

All of a sudden, in the lines of his face, the crook of his nose, the contours of his jaw, I started to see hints of my own face and of Genma's face. This was my father. This was my father.

Admittedly, his sudden appearance really didn't fit in with the belief I had held previously in regards to my parentage—that they were both dead.

I had only really become aware of the world after I was already in the orphanage—aware being the key there. I had been in this body while it was in the hospital, but it was like during that period, my soul's connection to the body hadn't yet stabilized, and even if the body I was in had been awake and functioning, my soul—and thus, my consciousness—still slumbered. When I woke up in the orphanage, I had just assumed that I was there because both of my parents had been killed in the Kyuubi attack.

Yet, there he was, alive and well, with a new wife on his arm and two new children to carry on his name.

Which meant one thing: I hadn't been taken to the orphanage due to a lack of available parents, I had been left there.

I had been discarded.

Raido didn't directly answer the question. Instead, he said, "I guess I wasn't clear enough—you're going to leave, right now."

The woman stiffened, but the man didn't so much as flinch at the ice cold tone being used to address him. "I'm entitled to see her."

"No, you're not," Raido said.

"And on what grounds are you denying me of that?"

"Genma is her legal guardian, you have no claim to do anything with her—that includes talking to her."

The man's face darkened at the mention of Genma. His wife looked surprised, her eyes darting up to his face. "Genma?" she asked.

"Oh. Didn't you tell here there were two children that you left behind?" Raido asked.

The woman's eyes widened, her mouth parted. She looked between the two men, taken aback, before she steeled herself and her lips pursed. "I'm… I'm sure he had a very good reason for what he did," she answered, though she didn't look like she believed a word of what she said.

The man gave a nod of approval nonetheless, turning back to Raido. "Where's Genma?" he asked. "If you won't let me speak to Tomoko-chan, then I'll take it up with him."

"Where he is right now is none of your business," Raido ground out, sounding more and more like he was entertaining the idea of an attempted homicide against the man in front of him.

"Otto, maybe we should—"

"It's fine, Akiko," the man said. "He won't do anything."

Akiko bit her lip nervously but nodded.

Raido wasn't having any of that, though. "Want a bet?"

"Rai," I murmured, hating how small my voice sounded, "what's going on?"

He turned to look at me, as if only just remembering that I was even there, and his lips twisted into a reassuring smile, though the hardness didn't leave his eyes. "Go back to the kitchen, Tomoko-chan. I'll be there in a minute."

I hesitated for a second before I gave a nod, and made my way back to the table. The exchange finished in less than a minute—I heard Raido say one more thing, in a harsh and low tone, before the door was slammed shut.

I had situated myself in my seat, but the food in front of me sat untouched.

It was… a lot to process.

Especially considering Genma had to have known that my father was still alive, and had neglected to tell me. That was more of the background noise, though, a minor irritation buzzing in the back of my mind, because there were reasons that he might have done that, there was a rationale for it.

Leaving a child that you could have cared for at an orphanage? There was no way to defend that type of action. The inexplicable sense of hurt that I felt from the knowledge that he had just left me there, that I hadn't been enough for him, that there had to have been something wrong with me, was front and center.

What kind of person did that?

Leave a child at an orphanage, for the sake of what?

Going off to the country and getting remarried?

From the memories I had in my mind, I was certain that that woman wasn't my birth mother—they had two different faces, two different hair colors, and two different voices. My mother had died in the Kyuubi attack. She had to have.

The thought that there had been two parents who hadn't wanted me…

"Moko-chan?"

I turned my head to look at him. He stood in the entrance of the kitchen, a frown on his face and the edges of his eyes creased in worry. He came over to where I was, crouching down so he was at eye-level with me. I slid out of my seat and wrapped my arms around his neck, hiding my face in the collar of his shirt, unable to keep myself from shaking.

It took a second but his arms did wrap around my little torso, and he started murmuring a few quiet reassurances into my hair. He stood, lifting me up with him, and carried me over to the living room.

We settled on the couch for the rest of the night.

'*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*'

Genma got home around eleven o'clock, entering so quietly that I wouldn't have known he was home if not for Raido shifting on the couch beside me to look in the direction of the door. I stayed in my spot, curled up into Raido's side and pretending to be asleep, though I doubted he actually believed it.

I heard the footsteps as Genma walked into the living room, socked feet padding against the wooden floors, and they came to a sudden stop behind the couch.

"Why isn't she in bed?" Genma asked. He sounded more curious than anything, though there was a hint of concern in there too, as Raido was one of the few babysitters who actually enforced my normal bedtime, and Genma knew that.

"I didn't want to move her," Raido said. "She fell asleep half an hour ago, and I figured it was best to just leave her."

Huh, so maybe I had fooled him.

"Are you sure? She looks pretty awake to me."

And… busted.

I didn't bother asking how he knew—I blamed it on that odd sixth sense older brothers seemed to have. I unfurled myself from my spot, staring up at him and ignoring Raido's dubious look. The second Genma saw the expression on my face his concern outshone his curiosity, and his gaze grew sharp, immediately shifting in the direction of Raido.

The man held up his hands. "Not me, man." Raido sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Your otoo-san stopped by—he wanted to talk to her."

"What?"

"Him and his family."

Genma ran his hands through his hair, letting out a harsh breath. I expected him to be stumbling through the door, drunk off his ass from celebrating his twenty-first birthday. To my surprise, he seemed perfectly sober, though I could catch a whiff of alcohol on him. If he was drunk, it was only barely, not enough to hinder his awareness, which maybe made the whole thing worse—at least being drunk might have lightened the blow of the news, all things considered.

While Genma had never mentioned anything about our lack of shared parentage, I had managed to work that one out for myself relatively easily. It wasn't especially hard, truth be told. I had seen a picture of his mother one day, sitting on his bedside table, and instantly knew that the woman in the picture wasn't the same person as the woman I could faintly recall leaning over the edge of a crib with a tender smile on her face.

The woman in Genma's picture had hair and eyes that were a shade of brown far darker than my own. I had hair that was a light ochre, and a right eye to match, while my left eye was a vivid silver. When I really thought about it, I realized that in fact, Genma and I truly didn't look much alike, except that we'd both gotten the facial structure of our father. It was that odd 'looking alike without actually looking alike' phenomena that plagued many a sibling.

I had just kind of assumed that we had the same father, but different mothers. Given Genma's lack of presence in the sparse memories that made up the life of this body before I inhabited it, I had also assumed that whatever relationship he had with his father—if any—was not a positive one.

With that in mind, I had been well aware that however awful I felt about the situation, Genma probably felt about ten times worse, and it was his birthday.

I crawled up the back of the couch and put my arms around his neck in a hug. I liked hugs.

Words were messy and easily misconstrued, especially with the limits that my vocabulary still had. Hugs, on the other hand, were relatively clear with their meaning.

Genma didn't even seem to think twice about returning the hug.

"M'sorry, ani," I said, the words mumbled and muffled by his shirt.

I felt him stiffen some. "For what?" he asked.

"It's your birthday," I answered. "Shouldn't be upset on it."

"You don't need to apologise Moko-chan, it's not your fault." When I didn't respond, he pulled back a bit, giving me a firm look. "It's not. Got it?"

"Okay."

"I mean it."

"Okay."

He shifted, removing one of his arms from where it was wrapped around my back, and rapped me on the side of the head with his knuckle. "Cheeky gaki," he said, a small, fond smile on his face, that didn't manage to fully escape the anger which held the rest of his expression taut. He set me down on the ground, spun me around, and gave me a soft push towards my bedroom. "Why don't you head off to bed. I gotta talk to Rai for a bit, so say goodnight."

"'Night."

"Night, Moko-chan."

I didn't want to go to bed, but I also didn't have it in me to cause any more trouble for him, so I complied. As soon as the door closed I heard the conversation pick up again. I sat down in front of the door and tried to listen in on things, but realized almost immediately that they weren't talking loud enough.

Intentionally so, if I were to guess.

Knowing there was nothing else I could do, I simply went to bed. I had a lot of questions, but if I couldn't hear what they were saying, there was nothing for me to do.

It took me a few hours to get to sleep that night but I eventually managed, forcing my mind to go idle, and letting myself fall into a night of fitful slumber.

'*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*'

Genma wanted to punch something. He didn't, both because he didn't want to put a dent in the wall and lose his damage deposit, and because he knew doing so would disrupt the child he had just sent off to bed. He knew she wouldn't be asleep, not that fast, but he also didn't want her to hear him losing his cool. She was still only three and a half, but she was damn perceptive, and if she knew he was upset over the whole situation, she'd get upset.

Raido was watching him with a carefully blank face. No pity in his eyes, because the last thing Genma wanted was to be pitied right then.

"What the hell is he doing back here?" Genma asked, more as a venting effort rather than a serious question.

"The first thing he did was try and talk to her," Rai answered. "Asked her how she was doing."

"You let her talk to him?"

"I let her answer the door. He started talking to her before I even saw him. All he did was ask her how she was doing—I got in the way before he had the chance to do anything else."

Genma sighed. At least the interaction sounded like it had been brief.

Then, he paused, his alcohol addled mind only just processing Raido's earlier words; he hadn't gotten pissed, not like Aoba and Ibiki had, but he was at least buzzed, and he could feel it in the sluggish pace that his mind was working through the information Raido was giving him.

"He… you said he had his family with him?"

"A wife and two kids."

Two kids? He had gone and gotten her pregnant nearly one after the other. Genma let out a bitter laugh. "Guess that bastard was busy. Two kids in two and a half years."

"He married some country girl," Raido said. "She's a good thirty years younger than him."

A country girl, huh?

With his own mother, at least, Genma could say with absolute certainty that the thing that had attracted his father to her had been her fiery attitude, the type most kunoichi sported. He had assumed that was also what Tomoko's mother had been like—there was no way Tomoko's mother wasn't a kunoichi, given the way Tomoko had been developing.

Genma supposed that, given the disastrous results of his last two marriages, the man had decided to take the easy route and buy the hand of a country wife rather than earn it.

"Yeah, that sounds like him."

"What do you think he wants? Legally, there's nothing he can do, right?"

Kami, he hoped not. He didn't think there was, but it wasn't the type of thing he had ever bothered to look into—he knew then what he was going to spend the next day doing.

"Not while I'm still her guardian, I don't think," Genma answered. "She doesn't have his last name anymore, either. So you're right, there's probably nothing he can legally do."

"You don't think that's going to stop him?" Raido asked.

"No, 'cause if he wants her, he'll try and regain her guardianship," Genma said.

"But he won't get her guardianship."

Genma didn't respond because he didn't have a response to that because he didn't know.

The legal system in the village was a bit of a cluster-fuck, especially when shinobi and civilian relations got mixed. Most of the time, the two were handled separately. The civilians had their own courts and councils. The shinobi had their own courts and councils. It was part of the reason that shinobi and civilians tended to not get into relationships together, nor do much of anything together, really.

As far as Genma could tell, should his father try and take him to court over Tomoko's guardianship—Genma's eyes closed tight, and he forced out a breath—it could very well hinge on where the case was handled.

His father would likely have an advantage if it went to the civilians court systems, or if the joint jury had more civilians than shinobi. They still valued traditional roles over most else, and as he was still her biological father, most of the civilians would rule in the older man's favor.

If it went to the shinobi court systems, or if the joint jury had more shinobi on it than civilians, Genma would get the case, no contest. She had started shinobi training. She lived with a shinobi, spent all of her time around shinobi. When she was five, she was going to go to the Academy, and become a shinobi.

Well, that was what he thought, at least.

He was starting to seriously regret not looking into a situation like this.

Genma felt the urge to punch a wall hit him again. Knowing he had to do something to vent this irritation, he fished out the kunai pouch he kept on the underside of the table and hucked a few at the dartboard posted on the far wall of the living room.

They each hit dead centre, emitting a heavy 'thunk' as they landed.

"I'm sorry man," Raido said. "I didn't want to ruin your birthday, but I figured you needed to know."

Genma just shook his head and scoffed, "I did need to know. It's not your fault he has terrible timing."

"Do you think he did that on purpose?"

"I doubt it. He never remembered my birthday."

"Kami," Raido muttered. "Imagine if he had stayed around to raise Moko-chan."

Genma threw the next kunai with a bit too much force, and he heard as the blade went through the dartboard and hit the wall behind it. "I don't want to think about that."

His father would have ruined her.

She wasn't a needy child, per se—compared to some of the other kids he had seen running around, Tomoko was a damn walk in the park—but she was freakishly intelligent. It was the type of issue that shinobi were more equipped to deal with because it was a type of intelligence that Genma had noticed only shinobi ever produced. Not that civilians weren't intelligent, but they had their own brand of intelligence, one that tended to be more nuanced and subtle.

More than that, though, Genma was patient—his father was not.

Tomoko needed everything explained to her. She liked everything to be clarified, she liked to know, and anything that piqued her interest she'd ask because she just had that thirst for knowledge. He'd known that from the second he'd first adopted her, and she'd looked at him expectantly after finishing that stupid little puzzle like she was disappointed in him for not knowing better. He'd had that reinforced when Tomoko started asking to learn kanji at three years old when most other kids were satisfied with their parents reading their books out to them, and had no interest in the matter.

She was both high maintenance and low maintenance in a way that few people would have been equipped to handle. He hadn't been equipped to handle it, for the longest time. It had taken effort to adjust himself to dealing with her. Even then, after two and a half years, there were times that he didn't still feel equipped to handle it.

Raising her took a form of time and effort that his father simply wasn't capable of.

That was why Genma couldn't fathom his father's reasons for returning to the village and seeking Tomoko out, with two of his own children and wife in tow nonetheless. The man he remembered hated children.

"How much does she know?" Raido asked, disrupting Genma's thoughts. "About… you know… her parents, and all of that."

"I'm not sure," Genma admitted with a shrug. "She seems to remember the orphanage, but not how she got there."

"And you didn't tell her?"

"Do you want to try explaining to a three and a half year old that her otoo-san left her behind because she was too painful to look at?"

"That's why he did it?"

Genma looked at him and realised that he'd never spoken to Raido much about this subject. He'd told his friend the basics—that his father left her at an orphanage, Genma waited a while so that she would have a chance to be adopted by an actual family, then when he heard nobody had been willing to take her, he'd gotten his shit together and took her—but never gone further than that.

Raido had never asked either, because the man knew better than to stick his nose in somebody else's business, even when that person was his best friend.

"She looks a lot like her okaa-san, I think, 'cause she barely looks like him. Guess he did actually love that woman—that, or he was using it as cover to ditch another kid."

"And yet here he is, with two more."

"I kind of feel bad for his new wife. I doubt she had any choice in this."

"If the way she acted around him was any indication, I'd say you're right."

Genma hoped that the woman's behaviour had been out of dislike, not fear. His father had never been physically abusive, but in Genma's mind, that was more do to his incapacity to do so physically, not out of a lack of temptation.

His mother had been a chunin, after all. If his father had so much as attempted to raise a hand to either him or his mother, Genma didn't doubt that his mother would have taken the man down before he could blink.

"What was she like?" Genma asked.

"Barely looked him in the eye," Raido said. "Barely looked me in the eye, though that was probably the killing intent more than anything else."

Genma felt a strangled laugh work its way out of him. "Killing intent?"

"He wouldn't leave. I told him to leave—twice—and he refused," Raido explained. "He was getting on my nerves. With what he's done, though, he's lucky killing intent is all he got. She just got the second-hand version of it, which wasn't fair to her, but I didn't really care. Still don't, actually."

"He's lucky it wasn't me," Genma muttered. "He would've been leaving with a broken jaw."

"That would have been a sight for Moko-chan."

"I would have sent her away first." Then Genma groaned. "I'm going to have to explain some of this to her tomorrow, aren't I?"

"Yep."

"Thank Kami I won't be hungover when I do it."

Raido stood, coming over to sniff him. "How much did you have?"

"I drank a little," Genma said. "I'm buzzed, but I had to babysit Aoba, remember? I don't even want to imagine what would have happened to him if both of us got pissed."

"What about Ibiki and Asuma?"

"Asuma stayed for like… an hour before he left. And Ibiki was just as bad as Aoba—did you know he sings when he's drunk?"

"You're shitting me."

"Nope."

Genma let the conversation drift, thankful for the distraction. He didn't want to keep having to think about it. He may not have been somebody who put particular value on his birthday, but he still preferred it when his birthdays were good days, as most people likely did. The two talked for a little while longer before Raido left and Genma forced himself to go to sleep, knowing he was going to want to be well rested for the headache of a conversation he had to have the next day.

'*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*'

I sat against a tree, the sounds of Genma beating the stuffing out of a training dummy echoing through the air.

We were in the training grounds.

Most of the time when Genma trained, he would just leave me at the house. He tended to go early in the morning, while I was still asleep so that he could be back within an hour or so of my waking up, if not earlier. This morning, though, he had brought me with him.

He hadn't said why, but he didn't really need to. Given the fact that our father had managed to find out where we lived, I knew Genma didn't want there to be a chance that the man would show up again when he wasn't around to chase him off.

There was a bang, and the head of the training dummy was sent careening off into the forests that surrounded the training ground. Genma looked into the forest, then to the intact dummy on the next pole over. He sighed, shuffled to the new one, and took up his exercises as if he had never stopped.

Genma was clearly working off some steam.

After the conversation we'd had that morning, it wasn't surprising. That hadn't been a fun topic for either of us to discuss.

I didn't get a lot of details—not that I wanted them. The basics already stung on their own.

A mother who died in the Kyuubi attack; a father who ditched me at an orphanage rather than care for me; a brother who hadn't even wanted me.

Well, okay. Perhaps that last one wasn't particularly fair.

Genma never outright stated that he hadn't wanted to take me in. He said he was hesitant, and that he'd waited so that a real family would have a chance to adopt me. He had avoided saying how long he waited, and part of me wondered if that was because he hoped I didn't remember it had been two months.

I knew I shouldn't blame him for it. He had barely been eighteen at the time, he had lost nearly everything he loved in the attack, and he hadn't even known I existed. Nobody in that position would have wanted to take on the responsibility of caring for a one-year-old.

Yet, the fact that he had waited two months still hurt—and I hated that it did.

I knew it shouldn't. There was no reason for it to. He hadn't done it maliciously, it was such a human thing for him to do.

Then again, my own reaction was also painfully human.

I let my head hit the bark of the tree and stared up at the summer sky, watching the clouds lazily drift across the blue expanse. The air was warm, the breeze was cool. The flowers at my feet, a patch of daisies, were still at the apex of their bloom.

It was too beautiful a beautiful day to be ruined by the ugliness of life.


	4. Academy Era - Part 1

My first day at the Academy had brought about vivid flashbacks of my time in the orphanage.

It was loud; everything was at least vaguely sticky; and something—or someone—in the classroom was letting off a scent that smelt suspiciously of urine. My money had been on the puppy that slumbered atop the head of the loudest child in the room. Iruka's had been as well since the first thing he did upon entering the classroom was reprimand the only Inuzuka in the room for not having properly potty trained his ninken before bringing it to class.

I would have loved to say that that initial, ridiculously chaotic day had been an isolated incident.

To do that would be lying.

Things started to settle down after the first month—started being the operative word. It was still a small room with thirty bored five-year-olds, there was a limit to how subdued the class could ever get, especially given the involved parties; I sincerely doubted that Kiba and Naruto would ever be quite as quiet as I desired, especially when put in a room together.

I truly felt for Iruka. That man had a damn hard job, and the fact that he didn't have a meltdown on a daily basis astounded me.

I survived by hiding in the back of the classroom and using Shikamaru and Choji as buffers to keep the rest of the kids away from me. Shikamaru hadn't bat an eye when I started to sit in between them, as I believed that he was too busy being grateful that I wasn't Ino, who never let him sleep through the class. Choji seemed like he was just happy to have a new friend. The whole thing was a symbiotic relationship, and the only reason I managed to keep my sanity for my first year at the Academy.

During that year, I excelled.

The academics were simplistic, once I got over the sheer volume of propaganda that was sprinkled atop the majority of it, and I had no struggles with them. By that point, my brain and my consciousness had a more stable link, and it wasn't as much of a struggle for me to translate the mental functions my consciousness was making into actual results. That and I started to realize that my new brain was in and of itself far better at processing information than my old one had been. It felt like I had gone from a flip-phone to an iPhone.

Physical education had also been a breeze. I didn't sit top of the class, as I did in academics, but due to Genma's having trained me since I was three years old, I had the same type of advantage most clan kids did. In the first year, all we did was basic bodily conditioning, which meant that since I was already throwing weapons and learning basic taijutsu stances—or attempting to, there were only minimal successes on both fronts there—I had been far ahead of the curve.

I could have limited myself, but had found that really, I didn't want to.

There were a million different ways to die as a shinobi. I would be damned if I didn't do everything in my power to get myself prepared for that life. I had decided that if I got moved up a year, I got moved up a year, and I would have figured things out as I went. Being deemed a prodigy still hadn't been high on the list of things I hoped to achieve—it was actually far, far down there, right below sticking a fork in an electric socket—but since it wasn't war times, being given that label wouldn't have been a one-way ticket to the battlefield, nor would it have necessarily guaranteed me to be forced up a grade.

I still hadn't fully solidified any plans about what I wanted to do with the future of the world—as high and mighty as that might have sounded. With what I knew, I could flip the world on its head, though whether that'd be a good or bad thing was up in the air. It would be impossible to say which until the moment that the chips fell, should I act on my knowledge.

Regardless, during that first year, I had resigned myself to getting my bearings. I made tentative social ties with most of the clan kids, while all of the other students fell off my radar.

By the time we graduated, near half of the class was going to have dropped out and switched to the civilian school. Once we did graduate, a large portion—upwards of half—would fail their jonin-sensei's test and either go back and retry their last year at the Academy and be put onto a new team the next year, or they would head into the genin-corps. That was what we had been told by Iruka-sensei. What went unsaid is that neither of those statistics necessarily accounted for the clan kids, who would all, for the most part, hit the rank of chunin before they retired—unless of course they were killed in action.

With that in mind, I simply didn't bother speaking to anybody whom I didn't immediately recognize. I would have preferred ignoring all of them entirely, but that wasn't an option. To say I even became friends with any of them was a stretch, excluding perhaps Shikamaru and Choji. All of the clan kids knew my name, and all of them thought me to be a perfectionist and a know-it-all, because even when I was trying to be nice to kids, I could only find so much success. That was irrelevant, though—by the time their knowing me would matter, they would have long forgotten that I'd made a less than stellar first impression.

By the time the last month of the school year rolled around, I was top of our year, and had made sure the Rookie 9 were all at least vaguely familiar with who I was as a person.

I had a solid foundation to build upon once the next year rolled around.

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Genma walked into the office, hands in his pockets and a small frown on his face. He was lucky, he supposed—it was the first time he was being called down to speak with Iruka, and it was nearing the end of Tomoko's first year. Though lucky wasn't exactly the word, when he really thought of it, because while he hadn't been told what Iruka wished to discuss, there were only so many reasons one got called down for a meeting at that time of year, a couple of weeks prior to Academy registration.

Iruka was sitting at his desk at the front of the classroom when Genma entered.

"Genma," Iruka said, giving a short nod to the older man. "It's good to see you."

"Hey," Genma answered, moving to sit in the seat opposite of him. "Yeah, it's been awhile, hasn't it?"

"Fortunately," Iruka murmured. The man flushed, realizing what he had said, the bright blush contrasting starkly to the scar on the bridge of his nose. "Ah, nothing personal, of course, Genma—it's just good because it means that Tomoko-chan isn't causing trouble, you know."

"Don't worry, I got what you meant," Genma said, unable to hide his smirk. It seemed that not even teaching could rid Iruka of his tendency to blush at even the slightest embarrassment.

The redness faded, and Iruka nodded. "To save us a bit of time, do you know why I wanted to talk with you?"

"I've got a sneaking suspicion."

"Then I'll get right to it," Iruka said. "The higher-ups within the Academy have requested that I speak to you about potentially pushing Tomoko-chan up a couple of grades."

Genma raised an eyebrow. "A couple?"

"Potentially," Iruka repeated. "They're not entirely sure what level she might be academically, aside from the fact that her reading and writing capabilities are a good two years above her peers."

"Why the rush? We're not in war times—might as well let kids be kids."

"Don't worry, I agree with you," Iruka assured him. "I've already made it clear to them that I'm against this idea."

Genma got what went unsaid there, though. "And they disagree?"

"They do," Iruka said, "which is why we're here."

"They need my permission if they want to push her up in the grades, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then that makes things easy—the answer is no."

Iruka gave him a faint smile. "I figured." The young man shuffled a few papers on his desk, glancing at them as he rifled through, before he made a small noise and pulled one of them out from the stack. "Here, you need to sign this, agreeing that I spoke to you on the matter and that you do not grant the Academy permission to advance her."

Genma did so, giving the paper a scan as he signed. "That good?"

Iruka took it from him and nodded. "Think so," he answered. Then he paused, his eyes flicking up to Genma then back down to the paper. "Are you sure you don't want to talk to Tomoko-chan about this first? I can hold the paperwork for a couple of days if you want to ask her."

It was a fair suggestion, but also one that Genma had no intention of listening to.

As intelligent and mature as she was, Tomoko was six. She hadn't yet seen what type of repercussions came with biting off more than you could chew in the shinobi world—he hoped she never saw them, but he was far from naive, so he simply preferred to postpone it for as long as he could. He knew that, should she find out he hadn't consulted her on the matter and take it the wrong way, the decision could come back to bite him in the ass. He didn't think she would, but he had long since stopped trying to predict her reactions.

If he did let her move up, and she graduated early, though...

Against his will, his mind conjured up an image of Tomoko, at ten years old, standing in front of a dead body, wearing a shocked expression and a shirt covered in blood.

A chill ran down his spine; he'd take his chances.

"I'm sure," Genma told him, shaking off the thought. "It's fine. I doubt she'd want to anyways."

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"Moko-chan?"

"Yeah, ani?"

"Can you come into the kitchen for a minute? I need to talk to you."

I blinked, head swivelling over to look at Genma as my hands moved to set my book down on the table. He was sitting at the kitchen table with what looked to be a letter in his hand, eyebrows furrowed and a frown on his face, not terribly enthused with whatever currently held his attention. Unsurprising, since he was doing 'adult homework', as he often put it, which just meant the dealing with the finances and anything that constituted as paperwork.

I pushed myself up off the couch and padded over, settling down in the seat opposite to him. "What's wrong?"

He set the letter down. "Do you know what a trust fund is?"

My eye shot over to the letter, the vibrant red logo stamped in the corner of it drawing my gaze, the one that I knew to belong to the Bank of Konoha. It was the only one in the village, and one of the few instances where there weren't separate services available for shinobi and civilians.

Then I took a closer look at Genma's expression and posture—he wasn't just annoyed by the letter, he was troubled by it. My brow furrowed. Troubled by a trust fund? If it bothered him, then I doubted he had been the one to set it up. Further, if he was asking me about it, then I knew it was for me, as if it was a trust fund for him there would have been no reason to bring it up with me in the first place.

There was a trust fund out there in my name, set up by somebody other than my brother, and he was upset by it.

I knew then that the conversation about to take place wasn't going to be a particularly pleasant one.

"Uhm… it's when somebody sets stuff aside for somebody else, right?"

"Close enough." He turned the paper over and pushed it towards me. "I doubt you can read all of that, but you can probably get through enough to understand the gist of what it says."

He wasn't wrong there. There were at least two or three kanji per sentence that were beyond my grasp, as well as entire chunks of the letter that were illegible. Slowly, I worked my way through the contents of the letter, my chest growing tighter the further I got.

"My okaa-san set up a trust fund for me?" I blurted out as soon as I read it, my eyes going wide.

Genma nodded. "Everything in her will went to you," he said, finger pointing to a chunk of text that I hadn't gotten to.

The implication there was that because she left everything for me, she had left nothing for our father.

"Why would she do that?" I asked, voice barely above a murmur.

Genma shrugged. "She designed it so that you'd inherit it either when you hit fifteen or graduated from the Academy. This is a reminder notice that you're currently half-way to being able to access it—don't look at me like that, I know you haven't read that part yet. I'm saving time, gaki."

I rolled my eyes, but still found my mind whirling. Why would this bother Genma? It wasn't bad news.

"Does it say what's in the fund?" I asked.

"Nah," he said, "but I'm guessing it's mostly money, maybe a few valuables."

Which in essence meant that there was nothing weird that my mother had included in it that the bank felt needed mentioning in the letter.

"Did you know about it before now?" I asked, watching his reactions.

"No, this is new to me as well."

My lips turned down in a frown. "So what's wrong?"

"Don't worry about it, it's not important," he said and gave a wave of his hand. "I just thought you should at least know that it was there."

"Ani."

"Moko-chan."

"You have the… the face on."

"The face?"

"You know! The one you always have on when something's wrong."

"There's no such thing."

"There is so!"

"Is not."

I was sorely tempted to blow a raspberry at him, but I thought better of it, especially because I knew there was a fifty percent chance he'd just throw one back at me.

Instead, I turned my face back down to the letter, giving it another quick scan, but still found nothing that was all that troubling. Whatever it was, it must have been in the parts of the letter that I couldn't read.

Then my gaze hit the top part of it, and I got an inkling of what might be the issue.

"Why was it sent to you?"

"Moko-chan—"

"The letter's for both of us," I mumbled, thinking aloud more than anything. "If… if it was just for me, they would've sent it to me. So then—oh." My mouth formed a small 'o', and it hit me. Why else would it be reminding Genma, not me, that there were six years left before the minimum requirements were met and I would be able to inherit it. "You can use it—the trust fund, I mean."

He sighed, but didn't deny it. "The trust fund is set up so that whoever has guardianship of you is capable of accessing it."

Was that what he was worried about? "I don't care if you use it," I said.

Hell, given the type of expenses he'd already been dealing with from raising me, I owed him the money. Children weren't cheap to raise. The village helped with some of the financial strain, as their aid favoured shinobi who were raising young children alone, like our situation, but they only did so much. Genma had started taking on a few C-ranks by that point, because I was old enough to be left alone to some extent, so money wasn't quite so tight as I imagined it had at one point been, but I still felt that I more than owed him.

"I'm not going to," he said in a firm tone. "Your okaa-san left that to you."

"So?"

He just shook his head. "Maybe when you're older, I'll be more inclined to listen to you."

"But—"

"I'm gonna start making dinner," he said, cutting me off with a pointed look. "What do you want?"

Genma plucked the paper from my grasp and folded it back up, stashing it into the folder where he kept anything he deemed vaguely important. He started gathering up the rest of the pages scattered around the table, piling them into a stack and shoving them into the folder as well.

The conversation was obviously over.

I let out a sigh and asked, "Do we have any pork?"


	5. Academy Era - Part 2

There was a knock on the door.

Genma started, looking up from the scroll that sat unfurled on his lap. His eye moved to the clock—it was only 3:15pm, Raido wasn't supposed to get there for another couple of hours. The blur in his peripheral that was Tomoko shifted, and a single silver eye cracked open to stare at him, an eyebrow raised, the obvious non-verbal question of 'are you getting that' painted over her face.

"Yeah, I got it," he said.

"Okay," she said. Her eye fell closed again and she let out a small sigh of content, letting the air of the fan wash over her, rather than the rest of the room.

He snorted.

He set the scroll down beside him and vaulted over the couch, making no rush to answer the door, as the sound of the fan whirring intermingled with his slippers padding against the linoleum and filled the otherwise silent air. He absently flicked the hallway light on when he passed it, not bothering to peek through the hole at who was standing in front of the door before he pulled it open.

His face immediately soured.

"Give me one reason that I shouldn't just slam this door closed on you."

"Genma," his father said, the false smiling falling off his lips. "Where's Tomoko-chan?"

"Nowhere you're gonna see her," Genma answered.

"Ani?" Tomoko's voice floated in from the living room. "Who is it?"

"Nobody, Moko-chan," he replied.

"Tomoko-chan?" the man in front of him called.

The door was nearly closed before the man placed a hand on it and held it open.

"Leave."

"I just want to see—"

"Do you?" Genma asked, voice low. He didn't slam it the rest of the way like he desperately wanted to, but he didn't let the man push it all the way open again. "Or did you want that trust fund?"

There was a beat of silence. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, really? You know nothing about the small fortune that Tomoko's going to inherit once she turns twelve? Or about the four sealed scrolls she'll get with it?" Genma asked.

"That's not why I'm here. I'm here to see her," his father answered.

Liar.

The tone of voice was slightly higher than it should have been; the hesitation was slightly longer than it should have been; the manner of speaking slightly shakier than it should have been. He was trained to hear those things. He knew a liar when he heard one, and he knew damn well it wasn't just his bias speaking.

"Then it won't matter to you that I've transferred the contents of the trust fund into a separate bank account for Tomoko-chan, one that only she will ever have access too."

"You did?"

"Yes, I did."

"But—how could you—what?"

The man was spitting, his face red with anger and incredulity. Genma didn't try to dampen the smug grin from spreading across his face.

"The bank of Konoha was kind enough to remind me of my access to it. Security precaution, and all of that. "

"I see."

"So if you're only here to try and 'woo' Tomoko-chan into wanting you as her guardian, or whatever the hell you're trying to do, you can leave—even if you did try for guardianship, and even if you did somehow manage to win it, you'd have no way of getting to that money."

The man's hand fell away from the door, and Genma let it swing back open, if only for the sake of seeing his father's face in the wake of his defeat. The man did not disappoint. His face had scrunched up like somebody had shoved it into a pile of shit and the scent was stuck in his nose—a tempting image, now that Genma thought of it.

"That was meant to be mine," the man bit out. "I was supposed to be the primary beneficiary, it belongs to me. She never even told me—" He cut himself off, shaking his head and stepping away from the door. "You don't even know what's in there, do you?"

"Money and scrolls that aren't yours."

"Did you even read them?" the man asked. "Those aren't just any genjutsu scrolls, you know."

Genma's mouth twitched, but he fought to keep it in a neutral line, not wanting to betray his surprise. How did he know that? "They're just scrolls, nothing important."

As if reading his mind, the man scoffed. "I grew up around that shit, boy, don't try lying to me; I know a genjutsu scroll when I see one, and I watched Momoko read those things years ago. I know what's in them, they're special—worth a damn fortune, they are."

Genma refused to rise to the bait. The man wanted to goad him on—he always did revel in the power that came with knowing something somebody else didn't. "Then I'm sure Tomoko-chan will be glad to use them when she gets older," he said.

"If she's even able to use them," the man sneered.

"She will," Genma said.

The man's face twisted into a smirk, and Genma still got the distinct feeling that his father knew far more about what had been in the trust fund than he was letting on.

"Think what you will, boy."

He turned to leave, but Genma caught him by the arm, gripping it as hard as he could without actually breaking the man's arm. "I expect," Genma said, voice ice cold, "that I will never see your face again."

There was a flash of fear before he managed to regain his expression of disdain. The man yanked at his arm. Genma held on for a second longer, just to give it one last painful squeeze, before he let go and shoved at the man, sending him on his way.

He slammed the door shut and let out a long breath.

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I switched the fan back on as soon as I heard the door shut, letting the sound flood my ears once again.

I couldn't decide which was more annoying: the fact that my father had been invading my life for the sake of getting at a trust fund, or that Genma had managed to figure it out and I hadn't.

Genma paused as he entered the living room. "Eavesdropping is rude, you know."

Damn.

My shoulders shifted in a shrug. "Do you think he's actually going to stay away?"

"Probably," Genma answered.

"Good."

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I stared down at the quiz in front of me, giving it a half glance before I flipped it over and shoved it into my bag. A perfect score, which was in line with the rest of the grades I'd gotten during the last year.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru groaned. He lay his arms out on the desk and let his forehead smack down against them. "A quiz and it's only the second week."

I glanced at his paper out of the corner of my eye, which sat in plain view on the table. "How is it troublesome? You got a good score too."

"Everything's troublesome," Choji chirped.

There was a grunt of agreement.

"Right, sorry Shikamaru-kun," I said. "How silly of me to forget that."

The noise in the classroom picked up again and I smothered a scowl; a particularly loud burst of shouting off to my right had my head swiveling over to look.

Naruto sat alone at the desk, with three other boys sitting in front of him, all of them turned around in their chairs to look at him. I didn't know any of their names—a bunch of civilian kids, with plain faces and plain clothes. One of the kids had a test in his hand and was waving it in the air, the red markings of a failed test easily visible on the page even as it moved.

"Hey, hey!" the kid shouted. "Look at Naruto's test—he failed, 'cause he's a dead last!"

Huh. So people other than Sasuke called him that.

"Give that back!" Naruto shouted, lunging forward to try and grab it back. The kid pulled it away from his grasp at the last second. "I'm—I'm not a dead last!"

"Yeah you are," another one of the kids said. "You've got the lowest grade in the class!"

The three of them laughed.

Naruto glowered at them, mouth set in a frown and a heated glare in his eyes, even as tears pooled in the corners of them.

From the front of the class, Iruka called, "Hey, cut it out! If I have to come back there, I'm going to give all of you detention, got it?"

The kid with the test scoffed and balled up the paper, throwing it at Naruto. The blonde bat it away before it hit him, and the three kids all turned around in their chairs, still laughing amongst themselves.

Beside me, Choji watched the exchange, hands fidgeting in his lap. He looked like he wanted to say something, but after a few seconds of contemplation, he reached into the bag of chips at his side and pulled out a handful, pointedly staring forward at his desk. I peered at Shikamaru, who either had fallen asleep or was doing a good job of faking it, emitting a light snore as his shoulders shifted with each slow breath.

I let out a sigh.

Did I want to intervene? Not really.

If there was ever a competition held for the loudest and the most obnoxious kid in the class, it'd be a toss-up between Naruto and Kiba; being around somebody like him was just about the last thing I wanted to willingly do.

Did I know I should intervene? Yes.

Regardless of whether or not I liked him, I knew I was fully capable of helping him, and there was no way for me to logically deny that. Patience wasn't beyond me, at least when it came to explaining things to people.

I pushed myself away from the table and stepped over to where the test had landed, the wad of paper sitting off to the side of Naruto's desk. The blond watched me as I unfurled it and scanned the contents of the page.

It was a basic test. A few kanji we had learned, some of the background history—it felt like glorified propaganda, but who was I to judge—of the village, and then a map of the Great Countries that we needed to label via matching. Most of the kids had known this stuff before even starting at the Academy. It hadn't been intended to be an actual test of knowledge, so much as a way to ease the class into the new year.

Naruto had still failed. He should not have failed. He should have been able to do that test in his sleep.

My eyes veered over to Iruka, who was up in the front of the class breaking up a fight between three of the other kids. It was times like these that made me question how anybody thought it was a good idea to put seventeen-year-olds in charge of teaching rowdy killers-in-training. The shinobi blood in so many of us made us hyperactive by nature, on top of the usual energy of six and seven-year-olds. No seventeen-year-old was equipped to handle that. There were twenty of us, ten less from the previous year, but there was still an exorbitant amount of activity happening around the room.

It didn't help Naruto's situation any that Iruka was still leery of him.

I pulled myself from my thoughts—Naruto was looking at me with wary eyes.

I sat down in the chair beside him and smoothed out the page, pointing to it. "Do you know what you did wrong?"

His scowl didn't lighten in the slightest. "Why do you care?"

"'Cause this'll be easier if you already know what you did wrong."

"Huh?"

"I can help you," I said. "I know all this stuff."

"Why you gonna do that?" he asked. "You don't like me."

I heard a snicker, one that sounded suspiciously like Shikamaru's.

"Because somebody should. If you're having trouble, somebody needs to help you."

He continued to stare at me. Then, his expression started to clear, and he asked, "Really?"

"Really."

"Oh, yeah!" he cheered. "You're the best, Tomoko-chan!"

I cringed and put a hand over my ear. "One rule, though—please no yelling."

"Ah… uh, okay. Sure."

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I pinned the senbon to my palm, the steel cold as it pressed up against my middle finger, and I ensured was applying the proper amount of pressure—too tight or too lose, and it wouldn't rotate properly upon release, making it bounce off the target rather than sink into it. I kept my eyes locked forward on where I wanted the needle to go, attentive to each breath as I took it in and then let it back out.

It was early in the evening. The sun was still lazily floating above the horizon, but it was only a matter of time before it'd dip below—winter was well on its way, as we were already halfway through October, and the days had begun growing shorter. I knew we only had perhaps an hour left of light before we'd have to call it quits.

I wanted to make the most of what time I had left to practice.

In one smooth motion, I cocked my elbow and raised my forearm up at a ninety-degree angle, left shoulder pulled back, and slid my right foot forward to face the target.

Breathe in, breathe out, release.

Naruto let out a groan beside me, flopping down onto the grass, his worksheet fluttering to the ground beside him. I twitched at the sudden noise and the senbon flew crooked, slipping past the target and clinking against the soil as it landed a couple of feet behind it.

"Naruto-kun," I said, a sigh passing my lips. I turned on my heel to look at him. "Remember what I said about no sudden noises?"

"But it's so boring!"

"I know," I said, "but if you want to mope out loud, wait until after I throw."

"Yeah, yeah."

"If you're gonna be like that, you get to be the one to find the senbon when I miss."

He squeaked. "Okay, I'll be good!"

I rolled my eyes but trudged off to grab the five or so senbon that lay scattered across the dirt of the training ground.

Genma had been called out on a mission, so I had taken it upon myself to go over my projectile training while Naruto did his practice questions for the upcoming test. Technically, he was supposed to be doing his own exercises while he studied—I'd found that to be the most effective way to focus his mind—but as he'd been working well for the rest of the evening I hadn't bothered nagging him about it. I had, however, asked him to be quiet while I did my own training.

After the nearly three years Genma had spent drilling me on my forms, I was fully capable of recognizing my own errors as I made them—at least, when it was on basic throws such as what I was doing. Anything that involved movement or complex grips I stayed away from.

I retook my stance and, after giving Naruto a look, I tried the throw again and the senbon sunk into the target, halfway to the bullseye, the tip of it sinking a couple of centimeters deep. That may not have sounded like much, but given that the tips of the senbon were severely blunted, as all practice projectiles were, I was proud of it.

"Hey, wow Tomoko-chan," Naruto said, "that's pretty cool."

I blinked at him, not keeping all of the surprise out of my voice as I asked, "Really?"

"Yeah!" he cheered. "You actually hit it!"

I shrugged. "I've been practicing for years. It'd be bad if I couldn't at least hit it."

Most of my progress had, admittedly, been over the course of the previous year, as that was when my arms finally started to garner any form of muscle. However, the only reason I'd been able to advance at the speed I had was due to the solid foundation Genma had drilled into me from the get-go.

"Hey, think I can try?" he asked, bouncing up and down on his butt.

"Do you know how?"

"Well… uh… no—but I can learn!"

We hadn't gotten to projectiles at the Academy—for whatever reason, they seemed hesitant to put weapons into the hands of rowdy kids. Who would have thought?

"C'mere." I shuffled around in my pouch and pulled out a few kunai instead of senbon. "I'm gonna show you how to use these, though, 'cause they'll be easier for you."

Senbon were easiest for me because they were small and required more accuracy than force to throw successfully. Naruto needed the opposite. Kunai were heavier than senbon, which wouldn't be any issue for him due to his sturdier biology and bigger hands; they took less accuracy because they tended to fly straighter naturally, and had a better chance of sticking to the target on a poor throw, even blunted as mine were.

I handed Naruto one of them, and stepped back, watching how he tried to hold them on his own before stepping in.

He held the grip of it gingerly and his face scrunched up, eyes narrowed, shifting his grip on it until he settled on what was comfortable for him—it wasn't the worst grip ever, so I didn't bother correcting him yet. Then he awkwardly shuffled into a stiff position and raised an arm.

"Wait," I said, just as he was about to throw. I moved closer and made a few tweaks to his form, tapping against his shoulders until they loosened up and shifting his elbow a bit lower and a bit further back. Then I shuffled to where I had stood before and nodded. "Alright, try now."

He threw it hard.

The kunai wobbled in the air and missed the target by a solid two feet, thunking against a tree in the background.

"I missed," he said, giving a petulant pout.

"Nobody gets it on their first try," I said. "You gotta practice."

Rather than force Naruto to keep doing the worksheet—the stuff on it wasn't that important, only the minor bits for the test that I hadn't crammed into his head yet—I gave him a crash course in kunai throwing. He wasn't a natural, by any standard, but he certainly wasn't as terrible as I had expected.

We spent the rest of our time there working on that before we parted ways, just as the sun was fading from the sky. Naruto went off to his apartment, and I went off to mine, expecting it to be empty.

However, I was greeted by an unlocked door and the sound of food cooking.

"Tadaima," I called hesitantly.

"Okaeri," the voice of Raido answered.

It was his turn to play mother hen, then.

I meandered into the kitchen. "Want any help?"

The man shook his head. "I'm nearly done. Just go get cleaned up, and if you're back before I'm done you can set the table."

I discarded my equipment in my room and then hopped into the shower for a quick wash, getting rid of the grime and the light coating of sweat on my arms and forehead. By the time I had dried myself off and gotten into a fresh change of clothes, Raido was already waiting at the table, having set it himself and put out a plate for each of us.

While Genma no longer had somebody staying with me for the entire time he was gone, he did have somebody—mostly Raido—stop by the house once or twice a day to make sure I was eating proper food and getting enough sleep.

"Sorry," I said as I slipped into my seat, "I probably should have waited to shower."

Raido shrugged. "You kind of stank, so I'm glad you did."

"That's not very nice."

"I'm not very nice."

I stuck my tongue out at him and he rolled his eyes.

"Itadakimasu," I said, picking up my fork and taking a bite.

There was a brief silence, while the two of us started in on the meal, before Raido asked, "So, how was your training? That's where you were, right?"

I nodded, swallowing what was in my mouth. "Uh huh. It was good—I helped a friend study, and got some time to work on my throwing stuff."

He raised an eyebrow. "You have friends?"

If I had had a different track record, I may have been offended at the question. As it was, I gave a small smile and a nod. "Yeah."

"Who?"

"Um… Naruto Uzumaki?"

He stared. "You're serious?"

"Yes?"

"You're telling me that you," he said, pointing his fork at me, "a kid who hates loud noises, are friends with the loudest, brattiest, most obnoxious kid in your grade?"

"Yes?"

He let out a bark of laughter, shaking his head. "Man. Learn something new every day."

I shrugged, internally grateful that the only things he'd held against Naruto were those, rather than the Kyuubi sealed into his belly.

Generally speaking, shinobi tended to be slightly more understanding the separation between being the container of the Kyuubi and actually being the Kyuubi. Some would claim fears of the chakra leaking into Naruto, but most refused to believe that the Yondaime would take the risk of a faulty seal when trading his own life to apply it.

As well as I knew that it was not the case, I struggled to really blame people for their hate.

Fear was a potent motivator. I didn't think it fair to Naruto, considering he got the shit end of the stick in this equation, but I also understood that a lot of people lost everything in that attack, and a six-year-old was an easy target. People still grieved, all these years later, and rationality often got lost in the shuffle.

"I mean… he's not that bad once other people aren't around," I said. "He just does it for attention."

"You think?"

I nodded, swallowing the food in my mouth. "He doesn't really have friends, and he doesn't have any family. Most people around the village ignore him," I murmured. "I just kinda… felt bad for him."

It had only been a month since I started tutoring him a few days a week, but I could already see a difference in his demeanor. Yes, he was still loud most of the time, and yes, he could still be a complete brat when he wanted to be, but the longer I hung around him the more often I got to see the somewhat quieter side of him. The kid had, despite my initial impression of him, started to grow on me—kind of like a fungus.

At his core, I knew he was just lonely—what six-year-old in his position wouldn't be?

As well, I was aware that Raido's reaction to hearing that I'd made a single actual friend was part of why I needed to stick it out with the blonde.

I'd realized, a week or so after starting to tutor Naruto, that there was a high likelihood that I'd be on a team with him, as I held the title of top kunoichi in our year. The only person who may have been able to compete with me academically was Sakura. It was impossible to say whether or not she'd actually have any chance of taking the spot, as it was too early on, but I had serious doubts that she would.

So I forced myself to adjust.

It wouldn't happen overnight, but I knew that even in just a month, I had gotten a bit better. There was a chance that I'd never fully get over it—actually, I probably wouldn't ever get completely over it. I just had to build up a tolerance to him.

There was a bit more idle chatter at the table as we finished eating. Raido spent a few minutes making me a breakfast and bento for tomorrow, while I cleaned up the dishes.

I managed to annoy him into writing out a few kanji for me so I'd have something to work on for the rest of the evening. After that, he went off to do his own thing for the night, with the promise that he'd pop by in the morning.

With a small sigh, I settled myself down on the living room floor for the rest of the night, letting the radio drone on in the background.


	6. Academy Era - Part 3

"What do you want?"

I stared at the face of Sasuke Uchiha, with his cheeks puffed out and his eyes set in a glare that was about as intimidating as a puppy's, and forced myself to ward off a smile. He was so cute.

His fingers twitched, his hand still hovering over the pouch of kunai that was attached to his waist.

"Do you want some help?" I asked.

"I don't need your help."

I inclined my head, the edges of my lips still fighting to twitch upwards. "Are you sure? I can tell you right now how to fix that throw."

He turned his nose up and scoffed. "My onii-san is gonna help me."

"There's no reason you can't get help from both of us."

"You'll just be wasting my time—my onii-san's help is gonna be way better than yours."

"Well, my aniki taught me how to throw, and he's pretty good at it. I'm not as good as him, and I'm probably not as good as your brother, but I am the best at throwing weapons in our class, so I know I can give you some help."

To further prove my point, I reached into the kunai pouch that I had hidden under my shirt in lieu of my thigh holster—Genma approved of me always carrying kunai, but the kunoichi class teacher didn't—and palmed a kunai, sending it into the target with a deft twitch of my arm. It sunk into the wood an inch off of the bullseye. Sasuke was standing twice as close as I normally did when Genma and I were training, making it an easy throw by my usual standards.

The haughty mask flickered out of place for half a second before it returned, albeit toned down. That time, I did smile, my lips shifting into a crescent shape.

Really, that's all Sasuke's attitude was: a mask.

I had realized that within the first year at the Academy. Anytime the girls got near him, making their various attempts at garnering his affection, he'd become the world's biggest brat. When the boys tried to one-up him, he'd brush them off with a shoulder so cold it could make the Land of Snow jealous. Yet, whenever nobody was paying attention to him, his face would soften; anytime his mother came to pick him up, one could even go so far as to call him cheerful.

Sasuke Uchiha wasn't mean, not really. He was just shy. The attitude was a defense mechanism—at least, that was what I had come to assume.

Either way, the attempts at being intimidating were not even close to hitting the mark against me, as they leaned too far towards the realm of 'completely adorable'.

"Alright," the boy said, not hiding his skepticism. "I guess I can listen."

I pulled a kunai from my holster and handed it to him.

Sasuke took it and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the weapon. He held it flat against his palm, with his thumb pressed up against the ring of the kunai and his fingers held together in a straight line, which wasn't incorrect so much as more difficult for a beginner, since it left less room for error when actually throwing the kunai than some of the other grip variations Genma had shown me. Most shinobi eventually got skilled enough with throwing kunai that they could hold it however they wanted and still hit a bullseye, but at this stage, grip was key in whether or not a throw would land.

When he cocked his arm and threw, the kunai flew towards the edge of the target—it would have hit the mark if not for the fact that the weapon rotated in the air, the hilt hitting the wood instead of the blade, and the kunai was sent bouncing off onto the ground with a sad thump.

He turned to give me an expectant look.

"Your grip is wrong," I said. "But you're flicking your wrist a bit when you throw, too, and because your grip is wrong the blade is flipping in the air—" I made a twirling motion with my hand, "—the hilt hits the target instead of the blade."

Sasuke frowned. "That's the grip my onii-san showed me."

"Ah, I guess wrong isn't quite the word—that kind of grip isn't the best for a beginner," I said. "My aniki's been teaching me how to throw weapons for three years, and I don't use that grip because it's too hard."

"But it's what my onii-san uses, he said it's the way our otou-san showed him."

"I'm not saying you can never use it—once you stop flicking your wrist, it'll work fine."

"I don't flick my wrist."

"You do," I corrected, "you just don't know it."

"Only beginners flick their wrist," he said with a sniff. "I'm not a beginner."

I tilted my head, thinking through the best way to approach this. I pulled out another kunai and handed it to him and said, "Get ready to throw it, but don't actually throw it."

The boy complied, though not without rolling his eyes.

I made a few small adjustments to how he held his arm, then pulled his hand until his thumb was curled down and his fingers were resting on the top and bottom of the handle. It was a sturdier grip, and whether or not the kunai landed relied more on accurate release timing over the way you throw it, making it ideal for beginners.

Whether or not he would admit to it, he was a beginner, I could see that much.

I took a step back. "Okay, try now."

As I figured, the kunai wobbled as it traveled but didn't actually rotate, so that when the weapon hit the target it was the blade that made contact.

Sasuke's lips eased and he blinked. "It worked."

"Yep."

"Thanks, I guess."

"You're welcome."

There was a pause, and I could see the attitude fade out, replaced with the softer expression I sometimes caught him with. His cheeks flushed and he shuffled his feet. "Do you… do you know how to throw shuriken, too?"

My smile returned full force. "You bet—but uh, I don't carry any, so I can only show you if you've brought some with you."

He nodded and hurried over to his bag.

I watched the boy with a faint sense that maybe, just maybe, this could be an opportunity to change things for the better.

'*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*'

"Tadaima!" I called.

"Okaeri," Genma answered.

His voice drifted out from the living room. I kicked off my shoes and meandered through the hall, making a beeline for the couch where I knew Genma would be stretched out on, an open book in his lap. The couch emitted a creak as I flopped down on top of his legs and buried my face in his hip.

"Hi," I said, the words muffled by the fabric of his shirt.

There was a pause, then the sound of a book being set down and a hand coming down on my back, warm and comforting. "Hey," Genma replied. "You're home late."

"Was helping somebody."

"Yeah?"

"A kid from my class needed help with training."

Genma let out a hum. "Was he being annoying about it?"

"Not really," I said. "A little at the start, but that's just 'cause I don't know him that well."

The body beneath me shifted, and the hand on my back started moving in small circles. "Is that why you're being mopey?"

"No."

I reached back into my pants pockets and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. My hand raised, aimed in the vague direction of Genma's face, with the edge of the paper pinched between my fingers. I felt it get pulled away. I had put off reading what was on that page until I was nearly home—thankfully I had waited, because if I had looked that over before coming across Sasuke, I may have been too upset to deal with him properly.

There was a brief silence while Genma skimmed the paper. He broke it with a snort, the sound vibrating through his body—I could take a guess at what he was reading.

"'Tomoko shows a strong grasp of the technical elements of being a kunoichi, but entirely lacks any aptitude for the more subtle and feminine aspects of it'," Genma quoted out loud, either not managing to hide the laugh from his voice or not even trying to.

"Stop," I moaned. "I've read all of it already—twice."

This time he did let out an actual laugh. "Ah, c'mon imouto," he said and ruffled my hair. "I'm just messing with you."

"I'll poke you're belly button if you keep doing it."

"You touch my belly button and I'll toss you off."

"No, you won't."

"I will—you know I don't make idle threats."

"Well just don't keep reading it, then we'll both be happy."

A minute of contemplation.

"'Tomoko is incapable of dancing in time to music, cannot put together an aesthetically pleasing flower arrangement, has no ability to properly apply makeup—"

My finger jabbed into his bellybutton.

There was a wheeze, then in one jerking motion, Genma dumped me on the floor so fast that I hardly noticed it happened—one second I had a warm pillow, the next there was nothing but cold hardwood beneath my back. Rather than get upset I pawed at the other couch until I had the blanket off of it. I wrapped that around myself and curled up into a ball, not caring that I was—probably—being overdramatic and immature.

I was still in the body of a six-year-old; for as long as I was stuck at this age, I was going take what little advantage of it that I could, dammit.

Genma let out a sigh and heaved himself up off of the couch, padding over in what sounded like the direction of the kitchen.

"If you stop pouting I'll make your favorite for dinner."

"I'm not pouting."

"You're lying on the floor with a blanket," he answered. "You're pouting."

"Leave me be," I whined.

There was another sigh, and I heard the pots being set down on the counter, then the sound of Genma coming back. The table scratched against the floor as he pushed it out of the way, settling down beside me and pulling away the blankets.

I twisted my neck around to give him a flat look.

"Look, it's really not that big of a deal," he said. "They're just kunoichi classes."

"Exactly! They're just kunoichi classes, I shouldn't have trouble with them!"

He frowned. "That's normal. The stuff they show you there are just some of the things kunoichi can have in their skill set; there are plenty of other things kunoichi need to be good at, besides all of that."

I flopped onto my back. "I know… it's just… not being able to do one or two of the things is whatever—I'm bad at all of them."

Mostly all of them, at least. I had a mind for what Suzume called 'politics', but I didn't put much stock in that, as it was really just a glorified gossip session that ate away the first ten minutes of class. The other things though, like drawing, calligraphy, makeup, flower arranging—I couldn't do any of them at a functional level.

"That's normal," he repeated. "Not all kunoichi are suited for what they teach there—just look at Anko."

A giggle bubbled out of my mouth. "I'd love to see Anko-san try calligraphy."

"Careful what you wish for," he said, the smirk on his face sending his senbon poking up. "I'm sure it's not a pretty sight."

"I'm gonna tell her you said that."

"Go ahead, I'm sure she'll agree." He reached over to grab the sheet of paper, and with a flare of chakra sent bursts of fire racing up its length. The sheet keeled over in a puff of smoke. "Seriously, there's no need to worry about what's on there—it's not important."

I gave him a small smile and a nod.

Satisfied, he hauled me up from my spot on the floor and went back over to the kitchen—as soon as his back was to me, I let the smile drop.

'*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*'

The jonin lounge seemed to be especially loud that afternoon—the snores that a hungover Aoba was emitting from his right didn't help that any. It was grating on his typically untouchable nerves. He wasn't in a bad mood, per se, but he had a lot on his mind, and the noise was getting in the way of his ability to think.

"I'm sure it's fine."

Genma rolled his eyes. "She spent the entire night pouting, Rai."

"She's six—they do that type of stuff," Raido answered, setting his arms behind his head and letting his eyes fall shut. "It seems minor and unimportant to you, but it's pretty damn important to her."

"Obviously," Genma answered, "but you didn't see her. She might have actually sat on the floor the rest of the night if I didn't go over and get her. Even then, she only picked at her dinner and went to bed early."

Raido shrugged. "I'm not trying to say she wasn't upset, just that it's nothing to be worried over. She's a perfectionist. There's worse things a shinobi can be."

"I know, but they're just kunoichi classes—they shouldn't be that big of a deal, right Kurenai?"

From the couch across from them, the tokubetsu jonin looked up at the sudden inclusion of her name. She paused, mentally catching up with the conversation, before she said, "I mean, it depends."

"Yeah?"

"Some girls take it more seriously than others."

"Tomoko's not exactly into that kind of stuff."

Kurenai just shook her head. "But she takes her other classes very seriously, I'm guessing, since Raido said she's a perfectionist," Kurenai said. The woman idly played with a loose piece of bandage that hung off her wrist. "She probably just sees them as another class—she's not upset because they're kunoichi classes, she's upset because they're kunoichi classes."

"Why would they matter, though? They're not needed to pass the Academy—hell, aren't kunoichi allowed to drop them in the fifth year?"

"It's probably just the principle," Raido said. "Like Kurenai said, she sees them as a part of her schoolwork, and you've seen her the few times she got a bad grade on any of that."

"So, my imouto isn't having a mini-existential crisis about not being good at girl stuff?"

Raido let out a snicker.

"I don't think so," Kurenai said. "I'd be happy to help her if she wants it, though. I did pretty well in those classes."

Genma snorted. "I appreciate the offer, but I already know she's not going to want help—she prefers to just bang her head against the wall until something breaks, I've seen her do it enough times."

The woman raised an eyebrow. "I didn't think she was the bull-headed type," she said. "When I met her, at least, she seemed too much like you to be stubborn."

"Most of the time she's not," Genma agreed. "It's just with this type of thing that she can be a bit single-minded—if she thinks she should be able to do it, she gets upset if she can't."

Raido smirked. "Which isn't too often."

"Hey, hey, what's this I hear about the little gaki?" a voice called from the other side of the room.

Anko sauntered over, hopping over the various furniture in the lounge—and any shinobi who happened to be using it—on her way to their group. She had a stick of dango in one hand and a wild grin on her face.

Somehow, whenever the topic of his little sister came up, Anko magically appeared. He never quite understood that dynamic. By all accounts, Anko was as loud and obnoxious as it came, which was exactly the opposite of Tomoko and exactly the type of person she stayed away from at all costs. Yet, in just one weekend, the two had managed to hit it off.

Genma hated to admit it but he'd been weary of Anko, at least at first, due to her connections to Orochimaru. That man had always seemed off to Genma, and his gut instinct had only been proven right once Orochimaru turned his back on the village. When the man left, though, Anko had been one of the most vocal about condemning what he had done. From that point, while Genma occasionally questioned her sanity, he never questioned her morality—which was what mattered, to him.

Plus, somehow the teenager had won Tomoko over, and that had to count for something.

Genma grinned, thinking back to what he had said the night before to Tomoko. "Oh, nothing—just that last night she told me she thinks you're not much good at calligraphy."

The teenager let out a scandalized gasp. "What? I've got some of the best damn calligraphy in this village! That little punk—I'll show her!"

With that, Anko disappeared in a cloud of smoke and leaves.

"She didn't actually say that, did she?" Raido asked.

"Nah," Genma said, "I did."

"That's cruel. You realize Anko's probably going to hunt her down, right?"

"She's in school right now, so it's not like Anko can actually do anything—yet." Genma shrugged. "Maybe Moko-chan can learn something from her."

'*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*' '*'*'*'

"Wait—what no, how—gah! Tomoko-chan, this sucks," Naruto whined, letting his forehead slam down on the desk.

I sat back in my chair, my eyes rolling up to stare at the ceiling of the classroom, part of me hoping that whoever was up there would take pity on me and grant me some form of heavenly assistance. "It's just multiplication, Naruto-kun," I said. "It's not that bad."

"But it makes no sense!"

The boy glared down at his test, and there was enough heat in his eyes that I was almost surprised that the paper didn't go up in smoke.

"You weren't having any problems with it a few days ago," I pointed out. "Why's there a problem now?"

"What we were doing wasn't this hard!"

"But it wasn't much easier," I answered. "Come on, Naruto-kun—I know you can do this. You just have to focus."

"I don't wanna."

Math.

Of all the subjects we did in the Academy, the absolute worst for Naruto was math. I happened to be good at it, but I also happened to be awful at trying to explain it to him in ways that he could understand. The questions were never of much of an issue for me; the steps I had to take when finding the solution to an equation were common sense to me.

Explain an event in the history of Konoha? Easy.

Walk somebody through proper form for throwing weapons? Not a problem.

Break down the different biological systems that ran through the human body? Sure.

Lead somebody else through the steps of even the most basic mathematical equations? Nope, too much.

"If you do this now, I'll let you throw some of my kunai later."

His face perked up. "Really?"

"Yep. You just gotta do the rest of your corrections for this side." I looked up at the clock. "Whatever we can't finish now, we'll do this afternoon at the training ground—any time left after that, I'll spend helping you throw my kunai."

"Aw yeah!"

I couldn't recall anything about Naruto liking throwing weapons or having any aptitude for using them in the canon, but here he seemed thrilled by them, and he was determined enough that he was making progress. He wasn't a prodigy, and he never would be, but he was learning.

I grabbed the paper and my pencil, about to move on to the next question when a familiar head of raven hair popped up in my peripheral.

Sasuke walked over, expression neutral, though I caught a hint of distaste when his eyes hit Naruto. "Hey, Tomoko-chan," he said, "you should come train with me tonight; my onii-san's still busy, so he can't, but I have all my shuriken and stuff."

"Hey!" Naruto cried. "Shove off, duck-hair! Tomoko-chan's training with me tonight."

"Why would she train with you?"

"'Cause I'm totally cool and awesome!"

"No you're not—you're just loud and annoying."

They were both progressively leaning closer to each other, arms crossed over their chests and eyes narrowed at each other.

"Naruto's right," I cut in. "I always train with him in either the park or Training Ground Five on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday."

Sasuke frowned. "Oh."

My eyes moved between the two of them, and I felt my lips pull up in a small smile—I had an idea. It was a good one, really.

"Why don't you come with us?"

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It was not, actually, a good idea. Really.

I should have listened to Naruto when he protested the idea.

A grand total of four senbon and four shuriken had been thrown, two for each boy, and we had already been in the training ground for half an hour. Between each set of throws, there was bickering over who threw what further, whose form looked better—not was better, but looked better—and just about anything else one could argue when throwing weapons. I attempted to break up the first bout. The three that followed, including the one they were engaged in at that moment, I had let go.

I preferred to pick my battles. I lost the first one, I knew I would lose the rest.

I lay on my back, staring up at the sky and wondering where I went wrong.

"Well, if my weapon had hit the target, it so would have gone deeper than yours!" Naruto said.

"As if, dobe," Sasuke answered. "There's no way—I have better arm muscles."

"You don't have muscles."

"I do! I train a ton; I do pushups."

"Yeah well—well I do too!"

"No, you don't!"

"I do too!"

"That was totally a lie! Iruka-sensei said that stuttering is a sign of a liar!"

"What? Nu uh!"

"Hey," I said, interrupting them. Amazingly, both of them stopped talking; I hadn't expected either of them to do anything except keep arguing. I lifted an arm and pointed off in the distance, in the vague direction of the apartment. "See that over there?"

"Huh? See what, Tomoko-chan?" Naruto asked.

I left my arm up in the same position. "That, there—way in the distance."

"There's nothing there," Sasuke said.

"Oh, there is. If you squint real hard, you should be able to see my sanity, desperately running away."

There was a sudden chuckle and I jolted, scrambling up into a sitting position.

A boy, perhaps eleven or twelve, stood at the entrance of the training ground, watching our group with an amused gaze. Black hair, black eyes, creases running down both of his cheeks, and a stark resemblance to Sasuke.

"Hello," Itachi said, a small smile on his face. "I'm Itachi Uchiha—I'm here for my brother."

Sasuke ran over and tackled his brother with a hug. "Onii-san!"

I hopped to my feet and bowed my head. "Sorry for my poor manners," I murmured. "I'm Tomoko Shiranui."

The boy inclined his head. "It's nothing, don't worry about it. Nice to meet you."

I looked over to Naruto, who was staring at Itachi with wary eyes. I poked him in the side.

"Wha—oh. Uh, I'm Naruto Uzumaki," he said.

"I've heard of you," Itachi said, pleasant expression remaining in place. "My otouto has said a lot about you."

Sasuke flushed, but rather than refute the statement, he asked, "I thought you were busy?"

"I was," Itachi answered. "I just got home a few minutes ago, and mother wanted me to come get you for supper."

"Oh—isn't she making omusubi tonight?"

"That's what she was starting when I left, yes."

"Awesome!"

As endearing as I found the two of them, it was hard to watch them interact and not have my mind roll over the events that were to unfold in two short years, harder then to not imagine the events that would unfold in ten years.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Naruto's expression—jealousy, annoyance, and curiosity, all rolled into one frown. In front of him was the type of relationship he could never have, and the side of Sasuke he had never seen.

I felt a surge of pity for him.

"We need to be going," Itachi said. He bowed his head. "Thank you for training with my otouto."

Sasuke threw Naruto an annoyed glare on his way back to the village, while he gave me a little wave—no smile, nothing overtly friendly, but I would take what I got with him.

Once they were out of earshot, acting on that surge of pity I turned to Naruto and asked, "Hey, want to come over to my house for dinner tonight? I'm sure Genma won't mind."

I had a glaring headache from listening to those two go on for the last half an hour, and I wanted nothing more than a few hours of peace with my brother, but the genuine grin that lit up Naruto's face upon the offer erased any chance that I might regret extending it.

"Yeah!"


End file.
